The Ukrainian parliament speaker has told a female MP she must “get to her knees” after she criticized the “criminal” shelling of peaceful cities in the east. It was accompanied by accusations of “Russian propaganda” and switching off her microphone.

fter she’d asked for a moment of silence to honor the memory of
those who have been killed in Donbass, Elena Bondarenko of the
Regions Party gave a scathing review of her government, which
“separates people into Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians.”

However, as she delivered her speech, alleging the new Ukrainian
government’s “criminal” behavior in “sending its
army to bomb peaceful cities” and “depriving children of
the right to education,” cries were heard from some of the
louder opponents of the MP’s position.

Then, former acting president and chairman of the Rada, Aleksandr
Turchinov, asked for the microphone to be turned off, amid a
stream of insults from Bondarenko’s opponents.

Turchinov then joined the abuse. After stating that
anti-government views were “Russian propaganda,” he
proceeded to sternly tell her off in a defense of the Ukrainian
army, “which protects all of us – even you,” he told
her, before telling Bondaernko she would do well to “get down
on your knees” in front of the military.

Seconds later, cries of support and protest turned into a
now-traditional Ukrainian Rada row, with curses and verbal abuse
being exchanged among members.

An outburst followed from the radical, Oleg Lyashko, who
suggested that such views should be followed by immediate
expulsion and the label of “traitor.”

“Traitors must be shot on the frontlines,” he said,
finishing his tirade with “Glory to Ukraine!”

At the end of August, a new estimate by the Office of the UN High
Commissioner on Human Rights said that at least 2,593
people
have been killed in eastern Ukraine since the start of Kiev’s
military operation against anti-government forces started in
mid-April.

Meanwhile, an investigation by Human Rights Watch has placed the
blame for the rapid rise of the civilian death toll in and around
Lugansk, where the survey took place, on Kiev’s
“indiscriminate shelling” of settlements.

This assessment took place just as the UNHCR’s envoy placed the
total number of displaced persons, as a result of Kiev’s assault
in eastern Ukraine, at one million, with around 814,000 of them
seeking shelter in Russia.